Link round-up (3/8/07)
• The Official CGM Glossary
• 16 Social Media Networking Ideas for Marketers
• Amazon.com’s Social Design
• Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard
• Links Are the Grammar of the Web
• Branding is for cattle
• The Rights and Wrongs of Brand Evangelism!
• Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions
• Banner Blindness
• Advertising on Loading Screens
- The Official CGM Glossary
“
- CGM: Consumer Generated Media (example: unaided review on message board or blog)
- CGM2: Consumer Generated Multimedia (example: “I love my iPod video”)
- CFM: Consumer Fortified Media (example: Dove “Evolution” video spot)
- CSM: Consumer Solicited Media or “co-creation” (example: “create your own” Super Bowl ads)
- CCGM: Compensated Consumer Generated Media (benign example: Revver, ugly scenario: PayPerPost meets video)
”
- 16 Social Media Networking Ideas for Marketers
“1. Find who is linking and mentioning you: review your stats, create an RSS feed and Google Alerts that include your blog url, blog title and your name.
9. Extend a discussion on your blog and link to the blogger/s who contributed.
10. Develop a habit of courtesy linking - acknowledging where ideas are from (see #7, #8, #11).
13. Interview a blogger.” - Amazon.com’s Social Design
“Now, we’re not feature counters by any means, but we have seen the features on Amazon provide a tremendous amount of value to users during testing of the site. The product reviews, for example, are a huge advantage Amazon holds over other e-commerce sites…people really trust the reviews there compared to everywhere else.”
- Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard
“The Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard encourages you to score your email newsletters on each of the 10 Mequoda Best Practice Guidelines, add them together and arrive at a cumulative score. The goal is to emphasize the importance of balanced, usable and effective email newsletters. Your email newsletter should achieve respectable scores in all areas, rather than over-emphasizing a single area or two or omitting other areas completely.”
- Links Are the Grammar of the Web
“Linking is the grammar of the Web. Never say “in the following section” when you can link directly to the exact place people need to get to. Why talk about the launch of your new product, when you can invite customers to see a demo or download a trial version?”
- Branding is for cattle
“Marketers who obsess about brand usually focus on aesthetics over buyers. They are more interested in the color scheme of the Web site than in meeting their buyers’ needs with a content marketing strategy. They care about logos not buyers. They research color schemes instead of the market. Countless marketers got their knickers in a twist about the outward manifestation of an organization’s brand–including logos, image ads, and tchotchkes–all at the expense of buyers and what they need to understand the company — especially the content found on the company’s site. Well, they are flaky wimps if that’s what they do.”
- The Rights and Wrongs of Brand Evangelism!
“Every workday, the Lurker trolls the Internet. He dips into frequent-traveler electronic bulletin boards to check the postings about his employer, Starwood Hotels & Resorts. He ferrets out comments on any of the big hotel chains that operate under Starwood’s corporate umbrella — Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis or W….He dispatches an e-mail to the sender or posts his own message on the electronic bulletin board.”
- Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions
“The UVP is your site’s first chance to begin a dialogue with its visitors. In very simple language, clearly describe what you do, how it’s unique from your competitors, and how your customers benefit from your products and/or services. Don’t try to figure out the magic of persuasion until you’ve first addressed this one critical–and criminally overlooked–element.”
- Banner Blindness
“A usability study by The Nielsen/Norman Group (June 2006) highlights (literally) the importance of “breaking through the clutter,” or in this case, “content.” The study uncovered a phenomenon called ‘Banner Blindness’ where users focus almost exclusively on the content of a page and ignore the banners.”
- Advertising on Loading Screens
“Why aren’t there any ads or other info snippets on loading screens of Flash-heavy websites? It’s a huge missed opportunity since people actually look at these screens so that they don’t miss the a-ha! moment, but are utterly bored and would be grateful for some entertainment. For an inspiration, play some video games. The Sims and Sim City franchises keep people smiling with cute pseudo-scientific nonsense such as the blurb below informing players that the game is “mitigating time-stream discontinuities”.”
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